


Summer Birthdays (Love On The Run)

by emokid6969



Series: Please Come Home [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Confessions, Love, Other, True Love, magical sickness and magical recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:00:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28378098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emokid6969/pseuds/emokid6969
Summary: Sam fixes their demon blood problem, but by the time they find Dean, Dean refuses to speak to them out of fear of possessed-Sam. Will true love conquer all? Yes, always.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: Please Come Home [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077776
Kudos: 4





	Summer Birthdays (Love On The Run)

Sam and Dean don't celebrate birthdays. Their birthdays are just a few weeks apart, and every year, when Dean's comes first, there's a careful lack of mention of anything birthday-related, and Sam is never sure whether to say anything, never sure whether offering to celebrate would be an imposition; the silence is deep, so that when Sam's birthday comes around and actually it would be rather nice to have cake and sex and a ramble in the Impala, it's too depressing to ask for it because of how badly Sam has fucked it all up, again, at which point _Sam_ stays silent and says nothing, and thinks fervently of which gifts to give Dean and wonders why the only thing they've ever managed to keep secret from Dean was their own truest affections, and that, totally accidentally and against Sam's greatest wishes.

Sam's wishes are the following: for Dean to love them always, for Dean to know that Sam loves them, and for Sam to die at the exact same time as Dean after a long happy life together, in their sleep, holding each other and sharing the sweetest dreams.

It isn't that Dean doesn't know Sam loves them. But there's a hesitance around Sam ever since the headaches started and the yellow-eyed demon sent Sam to a ghost town where Dean could not reach. Ever since Sam was killed, and Dean had to watch Sam die, and come back as something else, something which was neither Dean's sibling nor Dean's true love, which looked out from Sam's eyes with an all-consuming hunger.

As it turns out, drinking holy water every day fixed the demon-blood problem; it takes two weeks for Sam's blood to fully circulate, and by the end of it, the telekinesis is still there, but it doesn't burn up Sam's insides; Sam feels more theirself than they possibly ever have. And yet, when they find Dean in a shitty hotel after Dean's months-long disappearance, Dean is suspicious and won't open the door, locking it like they're preparing for Sam to try to smash it down.

Sam stops by the next day, knocking quietly and asking Dean through the door for company, and Dean is ever more frantic. Sam doesn't know how to explain that the demon blood is gone; they send text messages explaining the holy water, and Dean just replies with "Good for you. Keep on keeping on." and a thumbs-up emoji, which makes Sam's chest crumple around their throbbing heart. Also, it's unclear whether Dean understands that the holy water isn't a constant regimen anymore; it was a one-time thing, a solution to clean Sam's blood, and though it's available in case of any future poisonings, Sam doesn't have to depend on it; they won't fall into that cruel haze again if they don't remember to drink it, though Sam does keep a few bottles around, just in case, and as a reminder of bad times. Dean seems almost not-quite lucid, fear dragging on the edges of their voice as they shout through the hotel door for Sam to leave, to stop lying about their tainted blood, to just use telekinesis to make theirself feel less horribly alone.

Sam tries to explain that their telekinesis is too familiar, and anyway, every time they touch their own cheek they can't help but imagine that it's Dean's hand, and that this longing is forever. But they know that Dean knows these things, and so explaining doesn't seem like it's the right thing to do, but Sam can't come up with anything else sane that will fix this, when before, it had seemed like Dean would be overjoyed to learn that Sam had figured it out, had managed a cure.

Sam gets a hotel room across the street and waits, sends postcards across the street through the real post office so that it takes them days to reach Dean, sends more texts that beg for a return to their previous expressions of their love, the shape it had had before Sam became really, truly sick. Dean stays away, still unsure, then comes by one night and offers to fix Sam's car. Sam holds Dean's hand in the doorway and politely declines, not wanting Dean to think that's why Sam's there, but then wonders whether this seems, to Dean, like Sam in the blood-drinking days, like maybe not wanting to use Dean for car-fixing seems like not wanting to self-improve, and doesn't know how to bring it up again.

Their birthdays are summer birthdays, but every time Sam tries to think of a gift to breach the silence, they become shy and full of reasons it maybe wouldn't work: a guitar would make Dean anxious about saving space in the Impala, a house would make Dean anxious about being tied down, a gift that was too cheap would seem thoughtless and yet a gift that was expensive would make Dean anxious about the amount of money they had left.

Sam wanted, for their birthday, cake and cuddles and a cool sketchbook, maybe all-black or maybe with a brightly colored cover, maybe with some more charcoal for the sketches Sam wished desperately to be able to draw again, Dean's nipples tight in the cold but Dean's eyes smoky and patient, watching Sam's wrist on the paper.

For Dean's birthday, Sam wanted to buy them a plot of land, with trees and a total lack of neighbors and a stream and a greenhouse, where they could build their own library to live in with a spacious, heated garage for the Impala. Dean always said they were easy, that they loved surprise gifts, that cheap, fun things were exquisite and adorable, that they didn't need those gestures of affection but that they appreciated them. Still, Sam couldn't pass a vending machine for temporary tattoos without a surge of intense need, both to get as many as possible to give to Dean, and also to avoid the embarrassment of giving Dean a cheap not-good-enough gift. Yes, there was context behind all gifts and temporary tattoos were deeply excellent ones. No, this knowledge did not make it any easier for Sam to have any idea what to give Dean to demonstrate that the demon blood no longer had sway.

Sam thought about mixtapes, but there weren't enough songs about love the way that Sam felt it for Dean, and the ones that sort of described it were all mourning songs, for the death of a loved one. Sam gets the first verse of The Water Is Wide stuck in their head for weeks, but the middle verses are all about being betrayed by your lover, and Sam is abandoned, but still full of that fundamental trust which is anathema to true betrayal, even as Dean mocked and ignored them each time they went to their door. Dean was remembering possessed-Sam; Dean was seeing if Sam had control of the telekinesis; Dean was seeing if Sam really loved them, or just wanted a hunting-partner.

And it was true that there were many lives Sam would have been prepared to live had they only Dean sharing them with Sam. The hunting was what they could do; saving people mattered to them; but there were other ways of saving people, and Sam could have easily followed Dean wherever they wanted to go. Sam didn't know how to explain this to Dean without seeming like hunting didn't actually matter, though, and kept swallowing the words "I would follow you anywhere" because they could already tell what Dean would make of them while not believing Sam was truly their own self again.

Sam prays to local gods, to the trees, to every painting of Jesus they pass in the lobby of that hotel, to the wifi, to the cell towers for Dean to come back, to hold Sam again. Dean maintains near-constant radio silence, and Sam spends each almost-sleepless night unable to focus, flicking through solitaire on their phone; ace, ace, ace, and Sam's heart pain-clenched, waiting every moment for Dean's call. Sam likes solitaire as far as cards go, but they play it for hours because the cards remind them of Dean's gentle hands on late-night drives last year, Northampton cops harassing them as they borrowed Starbucks wifi to download Indigo Girls albums to listen to after hunts. And Sam had had the demon blood, then, but now, without it, Sam sees every moment they weren't theirself and prays to the Trickster god to turn time back, to do it now, please, to let them save theirself before Dean ever started to maybe possibly actually hate them for being wrong.

The resolution is quiet: Dean comes over and leans against the doorway as Sam sits on the bed, shaky from relief at seeing Dean's face and sadness at the distance still between them. "Sammy," Dean says, and Sam's heart leaps, because no one else was allowed to call Sam that; it was Dean's and Dean's alone, Sam's truest name.

"Yeah," says Sam, voice shaky.

"Can I take off my shirt again?" Dean asks, and Sam nods and tries to not look rudely eager while also conveying intense interest. Dean closes the door and, in three strides, reaches the bed, carrying Sam's heart in a firm embrace. Sam holds out their arms and Dean melts into them; Sam cries, finally, from relief, and the tears that cover Dean's neck are fully human, like a salt circle of eternal protection around their entwined hearts.


End file.
